Meet Mount St John breeding and performance stud

We are delighted to be working with Mount St John’s Stud and their team. Their meticulous attention to detail and outstanding care for their horses aptly mirrors our ethos here at Absorbine – to optimise the performance of our products whilst ensuring that the wellbeing of the horse is always put first. Emma Blundell, managing director of Mount St John says, “We strive to do the best for each individual horse, and tailor the care of each of them to their bespoke needs and requirements whatever they may be!”.

Mount St John is a private estate set in the beautiful North Yorkshire countryside in England who specialise in the breeding of dressage horses to the highest standard. Emma and her team have successfully established themselves as one of the leading breeding and competition operations in the country; comments received from prestigious dressage breeders such as Paul Schockemole: “What made us choose those foals is very easy to explain: the best pedigrees”.

Mount St John have several home-bred offspring in competition training with elite dressage riders that are proving themselves on a national and international level, many of which have claimed national titles as well as competing themselves from the ‘Sport Barn’. Emma spent her youth competing in showing and dressage. She has competed up to Prix St Georges on her wonderful horse Diaz and aims for her other up and coming horses to be competing at Grand Prix soon!

The decision was made by the team at Mount St John’s not to stand any of their own stallions to give themselves the freedom to access a wider range of stallions that are available throughout Europe. Emma says, “we generally retain 6-8 fillies from each year…at this point some will become available to purchase”. At the stud, they believe that the mare is the most important side to pay attention to when aiming for the highest quality bloodstock. All their mares boast a strong competition record or descend from lines of sport producers. Be under no illusion that it is a coincidence that the offspring produced have Dams that have been placed in World Championships!

It is a common problem that mares in all equestrian disciplines often spend their best breeding years being ridden or competed, and consequently have limited opportunities to breed until they are older and sub fertile. The introduction of embryo transfer (ET) in the 1990’s has revolutionised the bloodstock industry seeing as the mare can be inseminated and flushed for her embryo with little interruption to her busy competition schedule.

In conjunction with their attention to detail and care for their horses, Emma says, “we strive to use the most up to date reproductive technologies and expertise available”. This prompted the set up of the embryo transfer lab for the 2012 breeding season under the eyeful watch of Equine Reproductive Services (Jonathon Pycock and James Crabtree) who have been the reproduction veterinary team for the past 10 years.

It became apparent that MSJ preferred to select their own embryo recipient mares and therefore started to collate mares specifically for carrying embryos. Their herd has now reached 40 high quality recipients that have good breeding and potential in their own right, as well as some State Premium German and PROK KWPN mares.